


When I Said Take Me to the Moon (I Never Meant Take Me Alone)

by lesbianettes



Category: Chicago Med
Genre: Aliens, Aliens Made Them Do It, Alternate Universe - Among Us (Video Game) Setting, Anxiety Disorder, Astronaut AU, Astronauts, Autistic April Sexton, Autistic Character, Blood and Gore, Character Death, F/F, Graphic Description, Implied Relationships, M/M, Murder, Murder Mystery, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Science Fiction, Space AU, Spaceship Repair
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:06:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27069103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianettes/pseuds/lesbianettes
Summary: Eight astronauts and their captain were dispatched on the Gaffney Mission, instructed to collect data of the uninhabited planet of Bilra and return home after a thirty day research period. On day twenty nine, a massive storm damages their ship and causes the airlock door to open, delaying their return.On day thirty, one of the crew members is found dead in the storage room, so mangled that no human being could have done it.Something is on the ship with them.
Relationships: April Sexton & Noah Sexton (Chicago Med), Ava Bekker & April Sexton, Ava Bekker/Sarah Reese, Elsa Curry/Sarah Reese, James "Jimmy" Lanik/Crockett Marcel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 11





	1. Men Who Kill God

**Author's Note:**

> Fic and chapter titles from "Rat" By Penelope Scott

After two months, they’re finally getting ready to go home. Two grueling months spent in near isolation with only each other to rely on for interaction are nearly over, and for Ava, it also marks the near end of her contract with this God-forsaken company. It was free, they told her back then, when the first gave her a place to live and a bed to call hers. Charity. Back then, she despised the notion, but now, she wishes that it hadn’t been a lie told to draw her into the contracts and rules and missions to abandoned planets to find any fossil or technological records to tell them what happened here. Why these people would have left. With no evidence to go on and most of them nearing the ends of their contracts, there’s a tangible excitement and playfulness in the air tonight. Even Lanik is smiling as he records final readings from his instruments. 

“Earth sweet Earth,” Crockett says, watching the distant glow of their home sun on the horizon. “I’ll be honest, I’m really missing non-dehydrated food.”

“That’s because you’re too prissy to eat fresh,” Will teases. He’s eating dried meat from something he and Connor snared last week, roasting some fresh and letting the rest cure with salt and UV, as he plots his temperature readings onto a graph. 

Sarah fakes a gagging sound and everyone begins to laugh. It’s easier to get along when they all know it’s coming to an end. At last, it will be over soon. Sarah’s contract finished yesterday, leaving her to relax and breathe in the balmy air while the others complete their jobs. They’re almost free. Elsa has her shoes off and her feet in the stream while she labels samples beside Sarah and they look so natural together, their arms brushing and sharing soft looks. They’ve kissed when they thought no one was looking. And yes, they seem made to fit their bodies and lips together, but there’s a part of Ava that wishes she was able to be part of this tenderness blossoming between them.

Noah announces from his place on top of the ship, “There’s a storm coming in later tonight,” and takes down the fragile barometer from it’s locked position on the hull. “It’ll be a rough one, so we should expect to leave mid-to-late morning tomorrow instead of dawn. April?”

She pops up beside him. The two are apparently a couple years apart, but they act with the same strange bond as twins. The yellow of Noah’s space suit and the green of April’s seem to compliment each other just as easily as their jobs- solar activity and weather respectively. It’s likely April’s reading is what has been read out to the rest of them. 

“I expect about one-half meter of rain and category two winds.”

“When?” Lanik asks.

“Three to four hours.”

Plenty of time to pack up, then. Everyone goes back to their work, Ava included, carefully going over her last readings. She’s been the medic in all this, and she takes a long look at the way that the foreign planet has affected all their bodies according to sixty data points. Crockett has gained muscle mass, Connor has lost it. April got taller with the gravity difference. The others have minor fluctuations that can be explained as basic human body fluctuations. 

“Did my tits grow?” Sarah asks, drawing Ava’s attention. “Lockwood on GFN-Y5 said that the new rations made hers grow like crazy. Did mine?”

“They’re fine.”

She noticed a slight change, but nothing worth commenting on. Even putting in that data makes her feel kind of gross. She does it anyways, though, and smiles at Sarah like she’s put the stars in the sky. As far as Ava’s concerned she did. Sarah is light and she’s beautiful, but Ava knows that this teasing friendship is the most she’ll ever get, so she doesn’t push the fact that Sarah has the most tender smile that feels reserved only for her. 

Connor chooses that moment to insert himself, demanding to know if he’s still the strongest crew member, which he never was in the first place. Ava gleefully informs him otherwise, and makes sure everyone knows that their physical health is fine to make the trip back; she doesn’t mention the ways that this expedition has hurt them, especially Elsa’s delicate constitution, because it will only frighten them and make the journey home that much more miserable.

By the time they’re all packing up for the night, April comes up to Ava with familiarly troubled eyes. She was chosen for this because of how easily she picks up changes in patterns, in what’s familiar, but it is a skill that has caused her great pain as well. April shakes her hands quickly, the way one would when trying to dry them off after a rinse in the stream, and looks at the gathering storm clouds overhead. 

“Something’s wrong,” she tells her. “It all sounds different.”

Ava doesn’t hear it, but she trusts April’s intuition more than she trusts her own. “Different how?”

“It sounds like someone’s screaming, but it’s…” April searches for a word. “It’s small,” she eventually comes up with. “It’s a small scream. I don’t like it. And it’s not coming from the engine, it’s something out here.”

A quick glance shows nothing amiss, so Ava simply shrugs. “It might be a bug or something. Let’s go into the ship, maybe it’ll be better.”

They do, but April winds up covering her ears anyways while she hunkers down in front of the screens in the lab to look over it all one last time before they leave. The end of their contracts is a gift. April wants to go into weather studies even after, though she intends to find different employers, and Noah will likely go with her with his expertise on solar activity. Maybe they will plan routes and departures for future spaceships, both scientific and recreational. 

Ava kind of wants to be a doctor when she’s done. She has the medical training to be a nurse, at least, but maybe she’ll have enough money in her locked contract account to pay for the extra classes and the certification. She goes to ask Noah what his final plans are when the first crack of lightning fills the air outside, followed by a heavy roll of thunder. April covers her ears more tightly and shuts her eyes. While Noah comforts her, Ava goes outside to wrangle the rest of the others, noting how Elsa and Sarah are smiling and at ease in the rain.

“Looks like the storm’s coming through. Everyone inside.”

First is Elsa, stumbling a little on her own two feet with Sarah walking behind to steady her. Crockett is next, tugging Lanik along and murmuring something in another language that sounds rather salacious based on tone. It’s Will and Connor who come in last with their packaged stores of meat and heavy equipment. That’s everyone. Ava closes the hatch and locks it three times. Clicker. Deads. Airlock. It hisses to prove that it’s sealed. Everyone wanders off, as always, in their pairs. Except for Ava. Her assigned partner for the trip had initially been Crockett, but he took a liking to the captain almost immediately, and she’s fairly certain they’re in the control room doing something not very family friendly. 

She retreats to the medbay to upload her files while the storm rages on, and eventually curls up in one of the sterile beds to rest through the night. 


	2. Technology, High Quality

The lights are off when Ava wakes up, emergency ones flickering every so often. Something must have been damaged in the storm. She calmly feels around for her flashlight before going to the cafeteria, yawning and trying to wake up fully so they can repair the ship and set off for home. The others seem to be doing the same as they all meet up in the caf, until they realize that there’s a soft light angling in from nearby.

The door is open. 

Not just with the airlock broken or one of the locks disengaged, but the whole door opened to the planet, with leaves and dirt and water making a mess of the ramp like the floor of the clearing outside. Her first instinct is too look around to make sure none of Will and Connor’s favored vermin got in, but they ought to figure out their next steps first. 

April and Noah are already there together, and Elsa and Sarah walk in hand in hand. They’ve clearly spent the night together- Ava pretends not to notice that at all. Connor comes next, then will, and finally Crockett, who informs them that Jimmy is doing a ship inspection to find out what all is damaged and how long it’ll take for them to fix it. He doesn’t mention the open door. None of them do. But when Lanik eventually returns, he gives the open door a stern look and pulls it shut before engaging all the locks once more. If he isn’t concerned, then there isn’t a reason for Ava to be. She should relax. 

“As you’ve probably noticed, the ship took some damage last night. I’ve delegated you each a handful of tasks so we should be up and running within a couple hours. Check your tablets for details.” 

He leaves almost immediately after that, probably to attend to his own tasks, and so Ava is left with the others to determine their jobs. She’s supposed to sweep up all the leaves that seem to have blown all over the ship, so she grabs the broom from the supply closet at the edge of the caf and gets to work. Everyone else carries on with whatever it is they’re supposed to do. It’s a peaceful, if lonely morning spent finding wet leaves pasted to the floor all over and scraping them into her dustpan that fills often. There’s not much going on. Every so often she hears someone- it sounds like Crockett- curse when they touch the exposed wiring while trying to fix something. The ship really did take a ton of damage. Nevertheless, she focuses on her sweeping before she gets around to fixing up the medbay and checking the o2 filters. The oxygen reading on her monitors is fine, which is why she leaves it at low priority until takeoff. 

Ava finds him in the lower engines.

On her way through the engine sections to sweep, she thinks it’s just mud. In fact, she’s annoyed she’ll have to mop it up at first, until the light hits it in a way that it gleams dark reddish black, glossy in comparison to the dull floor. Ava sets the broom aside to follow the smear of blood back to its source. 

Connor. 

Or at least, something that had been Connor at some point, but is now multiple pieces and a mutilated face that suggest he was once a man on their ship who studied fauna with Will, but no longer does much of anything besides lying there with his blue eyes staring out in fear. 

The next few moments are a blur. Ava screams and falls to her knees, Connor’s blood making a mess of her spacesuit, until someone arrives and pulls her away from her body. Three sets of arms hold her. Everyone must be in just as much shock as her, but all she can do is stare and try to remember what breathing ought to feel like. Is it supposed to feel like anything at all? Is she breathing? When did she stop? Did she ever start? 

“Ava, please, take a deep breath.”

She turns and hides her face against the chest of the person speaking, vibrations soothing against her cheek. She’s fairly certain it’s Sarah. The faint perfume she wears is comforting enough to help her return to normal breathing, or something close enough to it to push back the black vignette on her vision. 

“Crockett, help me pick him up,” Lanik instructs. “We’ll bury him outside. Noah, Will, search the ship for anything lurking that could have done this. Kill it if you have to. Sarah-” He pauses and looks at the way Ava is wrapped up in her arms, and then at the clear panic on April’s face. “Okay, uh, Elsa, can you start to clean this up?”

Sarah leads the three of them to the dorms to try and calm down. It’s the first room the boys clear. Ava winds up sandwiched between her and April as she tries to understand what happened. Connor is dead. His blood is still on the knees of her spacesuit and the palms of her hands. It smears on the others’ clothes, on the sheets, on everything. When she tries to push her hair out of her face, it simply leaves more of the mess on her skin.

“It’s alright,” April says. “You’re safe.”

They stay there until Jimmy comes back with dirt all over him and tells them there is to be another meeting in the cafeteria. Both Sarah and April have to practically hold Ava up in the walk there, and they both keep murmuring reassurances until everyone has their seats, one empty. It will always be empty. A sob bubbles up in her throat. 

“Will and Noah found nothing on the ship, so Will is checking the vents now.”

No one states the obvious. Will and Connor were closest, so he feels obligated to find whatever was responsible and kill it, and he cannot simply sit around and talk about what’s happened. 

“In an abundance of caution, we’ve sealed them off save for the cafeteria entrance until we get the all-clear. I think that whatever it was is gone.” Lanik’s eyes zero in on Ava’s still bloody figure. “Bekker, you should shower when you have the chance. Either way, we’re stranded here for a couple days while we finish up fixing the ship and send a report of Connor’s death back to Earth. I expect everyone to stay calm. The sooner we get home, the sooner we can grieve. He wouldn’t want us stuck here on his account.”

After he adjourns their little meeting, Ava takes the advice on a shower, throwing her suit into the trash chute as opposed to laundry. She never wants to see it again. Let them sort it out back home; her contract is over now anyways, so it doesn’t matter if she’s short a space suit on the laundry cycle. April comes with her, just in case. They both step under the lukewarm spray to get clean, water sluicing over April’s skin and catching the light just so. She is beautiful, Ava realizes. She’s just not Sarah. 

“How are you feeling?” April asks. 

Her gaze is somewhere around Ava’s left shoulder, but then again it often is, so she doesn’t think anything of it as she gets soap from the dispenser and starts scrubbing the blood out from under her fingernails. The water goes down the drain in a rusty tint.

“I just want to go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @neworleansspecial


End file.
